Inmagic Moves to a New Business Model
Embracing open standards, Inmagic has signed a deal with
systems integrator Digital Vantage Point, headquartered
in Markham, Ontario, Canada. Digital Vantage Point will
provide consulting, integration, development, and delivery
services for Inmagic Content Server customers in the U.S.
and Canada. Inmagic Content Server, which is built on
the Microsoft SQL Server, extends the use of Inmagic products
across the enterprise, creating a content management environment
that integrates internal and external, structured and
unstructured data. Inmagic views this partnership with
Digital Vantage Point as a strategic change in direction
for the company, moving its focus from individual workgroups
to entire enterprises [Inmagic: 781/938-4446, www.inmagic.com;
Digital Vantage Point: 905/415-8455, www.dvp.net].

Microsoft Launches Beta Version of News Alerting
Service
Keeping up with breaking news is becoming an increasingly
crowded area. The latest entrant is no less than Microsoft,
which has launched a beta version of MSN Newsbot. With
four languages represented—English, French, Italian,
and Spanish—MSN Newsbot is an automated news service
using MSN Search technology. In addition to providing
recent stories grouped in the general categories of
world news, local country news, business, sport, entertainment,
science/health, and technology, there is a news search
capability. According to Lisa Gurry, MSN group product
manager, "MSN Newsbot will be available in beta
beginning in November in France, the U.K., Italy, and
Spain." No U.S. version in currently publicly available
[http://uk.newsbot.msn.com,
http://fr.newsbot.msn.com,
http://it.newsbot.msn.com,
http://es.newsbot.msn.com].

Open Access Gains Support
The Wellcome Trust, the U.K.'s leading biomedical research
charity, has clearly positioned itself in support of
open access publishing. Dr. Mark Walport, director of
the Wellcome Trust, said in a press release, "As
a funder of research, we are committed to ensuring that
the results of the science we fund are disseminated
widely and are freely available to all. Unfortunately,
the distribution strategies currently used by many publishers
prevent this. We want to see a system in place that
supports open and unrestricted access to research outputs
and we would like to encourage others to support this
principle."

According to their position statement, "The Trust
is aware that there are a number of new models for the
publication of research results and will encourage initiatives
that broaden the range of opportunities for quality
research to be widely disseminated and freely accessed.
The Wellcome Trust therefore supports open and unrestricted
access to the published output of research, including
the open access mode" [www.wellcome.ac.uk].

PeopleWare

The LexisNexis Group announced that Michael
Walsh has joined the organization as senior
vice president, leading the company's global strategy
and business development efforts. Walsh co-founded Infirmation.com,
which became one of the foundations of FindLaw, He will
report directly to Andrew Prozes, chief executive officer
of LexisNexis Group.

John G. Dove has been named CEO of
xrefer. Dove has 35 years of experience in information-based
businesses including financial services, management
consulting, electronic publishing, and education. Most
recently, John has been working with the e-Government
Executive Education Program at Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government and previously served as
president and chief operating officer of SilverPlatter.

Lizabeth (Betsy) A. Wilson, director
of University Libraries, University of Washington, has
been elected chair of the OCLC Board of Trustees.

Search Engines

Germany's "Chemistry Information Centre"
(Fachinformationszentrum Chemie, FIZ CHEMIE
Berlin) now has tools to tackle the problem
of the hidden Web—its subject-specific Internet
search engines ChemGuide (chemistry), MedPharmGuide
(medicine and pharmacology), and PublishersGuide (scientific
publishers). These powerful search engines access more
than 7,000 servers and thoroughly search these down
to the last published page. FIZ CHEMIE Berlin evaluates
all entry pages found by the Guides for their relevance.
With a single search query in one of these free engines,
one can search thousands of servers with approximately
15 million Web pages. An extensive retrieval language
is available for search queries. In addition to the
usual Boolean operators, wildcards, and proximity searches
are enabled [+49 (0) 5121 82 613; www.chemistry.de].

Metrobot LLC announced the release
of Metrobot—A Map Based Search Engine
and City Guide, which employs a user interface
that depicts a network of road segments and associated
business listings in major U.S. cities. The roads are
displayed in a straightened and aligned manner, with
businesses appearing on either side. Users can traverse
the complete road network of included cities by clicking
on intersecting road links and access Web pages of businesses
along their route. Combining the elements of a map,
search engine, and online yellow pages, Metrobot is
designed with mobile users in mind, whether they are
walking, biking, or driving, and is compatible with
any type of mobile, Internet-enabled device in the immediate
environment [570/323-2274; www.metrobot.com].

Convera announced that its RetrievalWare
enterprise search technology will now offer new audio
search capabilities to pinpoint spoken and phrased words
in split seconds. Through a partnership with audio search
engine Nexidia, RetrievalWare will search the equivalent
of 30 hours of audio or video information in less than
1 second. For enterprise areas with significant audio
components—call centers, compliance monitoring,
knowledge management, forensics, training, intelligence
gathering—removing the stumbling block of speech
to text conversion expedites access to real-time information
[703/761-5274; www.convera.com].

MuseGlobal, Inc. announced the release
of MuseSeek, a new consumer-oriented
version of its metasearching technology. MuseSeek allows
Internet users to perform simultaneous searches of an
unlimited number of online information sources using
an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. Clicking on check
boxes lets users select specific sources they want to
search from hundreds of different information collections
arranged within topical categories. An Advanced Search
option allows more sophisticated searching using Boolean
logic and by specifying keyword, title, author, subject,
or description. Like MuseGlobal's flagship product MuseSearch,
MuseSeek will be primarily sold to software partners
for incorporation into their product offerings [801/208-1880;
www.museglobal.com].

Tribune Media Services International
launched News In Motion International
to deliver News In Motion and Knight Ridder/Tribune
(KRT) animations, TV graphics, and related editorial
content to television stations and their Web sites on
a subscription and spot sales basis. The site will enable
TV customers with high-speed Internet access to buy
broadcast-quality video on demand. Producer clients
will have access to rundowns, scripts, photos, caricatures,
and an index of news and feature animations for broadcast
and Web publication. Producers also will have access
to an archive of more than 2,000 animations, which can
be searched and previewed online [323/660-9004; www.newsinmotion.com].

Sci-Tech

Patolis Corporation, Japan's leading
patent information service, announced an exclusive distribution
agreement with Questel•Orbit
in October. The partnership leverages Questel•Orbit's
extensive collection of international patent information,
patent management tool QPAT, and search tool QWEB, as
well as PATOLIS Corporation's database, the only comprehensive
source of Japanese intellectual property documentation
and industrial property information. Revenue from the
partnership in Japan and Korea is expected to double
in 3 years [Questel•Orbit: 703/873-4713; www.questel.orbit.com;
Patolis: www.patolis.co.jp].

FIZ CHEMIE Berlin announced the launch
of INFOTHERM, its well-known database
of the thermophysical properties of substances, in XML.
By making INFOTHERM available via the Web and on company
intranets, FIZ CHEMIE Berlin hopes to target those chemical
engineering offices and companies that are increasingly
using the Internet for information retrieval. The INFOTHERM
database delivers data on pure compounds and on mixtures,
such as PVT properties, phase equilibria, transport
and surface properties, calorific properties, and solid-liquid
equilibria [+49 (0) 5121 82 613; www.chemistry.de].

Kluwer Academic Publishers is participating
in the AGORA initiative recently launched
by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome
in collaboration with major scientific publishers, Cornell
University, Mann Library and the World Health Organization
(WHO). In line with Kluwer's goal to further the worldwide
dissemination of scientific information, the global
partnership provides free or reduced-price Internet
access to several hundred key journals in agriculture,
biology, environmental studies, and social sciences
to developing countries [+31 (0)78 6576 542; www.wkap.com].

EDGAR Online, Inc. announced the release
of a new version of its premium EDGAR Online
Pro service. In addition, the company outlined
a new strategic focus on selling EDGAR Online Pro to
clients in financial services companies, including investment
bankers, asset managers, credit risk managers, compliance
officers, hedge fund managers, and market data professionals.
Complex fundamental, ownership, initial public offering
and secondary offering data sets, and advanced search
tools—all of which EDGAR Online previously offered
only to large enterprises as part of its EDGAR Online
Explorer product (via XML API data feeds for intranet
integration)—are now available to more than 8,000
subscribers to the company's existing EDGAR Online Pro
service [888/870-2316; 212/457-8200; www.edgar-online.com].

Blue Marble Geographics announced
that Domino's Pizza LLC (Domino's)
has licensed its 2002 TIGER/Line Map Kit.
Domino's selected the Map Kit to assist in the documentation
and analysis of physical store locations. The company
will also use it to establish delivery boundaries between
its corporate stores and locally owned franchise sites
[800/616-2725; www.bluemarblegeo.com].

Content from Agence France-Press,
the international news and photo agency, has been added
to Factiva. AFP content will be available
in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and
Chinese, including the English-language financial wires,
AFX International Focus, and AFX UK Focus [609/627-2312;
www.factiva.com].

Online Services

Swets Blackwell has concluded another
series of agreements with nine additional publishers
providing access to online journal content via SwetsWise,
which now carries a total of 7,645 full text e-journals,
with more than 90 percent of the top STM publishers
participating. New content includes the Association
of Learned and Professional Society Publishers' quarterly
journal Learned Publishing; the American Institute
of Biological Sciences' BioScience journal;
Construction Information Quarterly; 12 titles
from Hindawi Publishing Corporation; 10 additional titles
from INFORMS; The Journal of Social Development
in Africa; Social Behavior and Personality: An International
Journal; and three additional titles from Westburn
Publishers Limited [+31 (0) 252 435 584; www.swetswise.com].

xrefer, the online ready-reference
service that provides full-text, aggregated content
to academic, public, and corporate libraries, announced
the release of version 2.0 of its xreferplus
service featuring improved information visualization
capabilities, a host of new content, and unit conversions.
In particular, the new Research Mapper
displays how search terms and topics in xreferplus are
interconnected. Users can access the Mapper from any
set of search results, enabling them to quickly explore
the links among topics within the area they're researching.
The Research Mapper leverages xrefer's proprietary xreference
technology, which cuts across topics, titles, and publishers,
as well as text, audio, and image files [617/426-5710;
www.xrefer.com].

Social Sciences & Humanities

Project MUSE announced new enhancements to its search
interface. Users now have more options for working with
their search results, including saving, e-mailing, and
exporting results to RefWorks and EndNote, and downloading
and printing in text-only format. Users can also view
their search history and follow links provided to modify
their previous searches or retrieve all of the results.
Additionally, ProQuest Information and Learning announced
an agreement to link abstract and index records from
its online databases with the full text of the scholarly
journals in Project MUSE. Customers of both ProQuest
and Project MUSE can sign up to receive notification
when links are added [410/902-5045; http://muse.jhu.edu;
www.proquest.com/proquest/em-notecontent.shtml].

Legal

A free legal research tool has gone into public beta
testing. Legal Research Assistant allows
users to metasearch primary legal materials, government
sites, and legal blogs selected by information professionals
for reliability. It also permits metasearching the resources
in all or selected folders of two link libraries: one
that has been provided and a private one that the user
may build. The private library can include personal
documents. There is also an alert/tracking feature for
monitoring sites. The next stage of development will
include a research guide to assist users who do not
regularly perform legal research [www.legalra.com].

FindLaw announced that Block
Financial Corporation has chosen FindLaw's
lawyer directory as the exclusive lawyer directory in
the popular Kiplinger's Home & Business
Attorney and Kiplinger's WILLPower
software packages. Kiplinger's Home & Business Attorney
allows users to create legal documents for many types
of personal and business legal matters, including family
law, employment law, finance, and real estate. Kiplinger's
WILLPower allows users to create wills, living trusts,
and other estate planning documents. Block Financial
Corporation, a subsidiary of H&R Block, Inc., develops
and publishes consumer financial and personal productivity
software [www.findlaw.com;
www.hrblock.com].

Minesoft announced the launch of Minesoft
Patent Family Portal, an easy-to-use facility
to check patent families for over 70 countries and find
out the latest legal status for over 40 patent-issuing
authorities. Minesoft Patent Family Portal taps into
the EPO Open Patent Service to retrieve data from the
INPADOC resource and produces clear and precise search
results. Minesoft's interface ensures that running searches
is very straightforward. One or multiple patent publication
numbers can be entered into the search box, resulting
in immediate delivery of the requested patent family
or families. Each family is tabulated and followed by
corresponding legal status where available. Integrated
links to relevant documents located at other Web sites
enable further research [UK: +44 (0)20 8404 0651; Germany:
+49 (0)89 5155 4660; US: 866/745-3621; www.minesoft.com].

Alliances & Deals

OCLC is testing the opening of WorldCat
records to Google access. The project
will extract a 2-million-record subset from the more
than 53 million records in the WorldCat database. The
subset will target the most popular and widely available
books by selecting only records held by a minimum of
100 libraries. Google searches will retrieve the records
and link through OCLC to library holdings, so Google
searchers will be able see which libraries in their
area own copies of a particular title. The move expands
the scope of the Open WorldCat yearlong pilot project
to make library resources available from nonlibrary
Web sites [OCLC: 800/848-5878; 614/764-6000; www.oclc.org; www.google.com].

Caldwell College has retained ProQuest
Information and Learning to preserve its academic
research heritage through a new program to create a
digital archive of its master's theses. ProQuest will
provide publishing services for Caldwell's advanced-degree
programs through its UMI Dissertation Digital Archiving
and Access program. Caldwell College is the first educational
institution in New Jersey to create a digital archive
of its own research. Caldwell shipped copies of 157
master's theses dating from 1993 onward for filming
and digitizing. When complete, its archive will be a
comprehensive record of its graduate programs to the
present day [800/521-0600; 734/761-4700; www.il.proquest.com].

Reed Business Information has selected
NewsStand Inc. to provide digital production
and delivery of New Scientist. Established
in 1956 and based in the U.K., New Scientist
is a leading current affairs weekly magazine covering
scientific and technological advances. Subscribers of
the new digital edition can now download the publication,
just as it appears in print, to their laptop, desktop
or Tablet PC. Once downloaded, the publication is stored
on the user's hard drive and can be archived and searched
for keywords [512/334-5123; www.newsstand.com].

Portals & Intranets

Access Innovations, Inc. announced
the release for license of over 30 topical taxonomies
that span knowledge domains from agriculture to technology.
The collection includes taxonomies and training sets
for defense, business, finance, education, medicine,
computers, news, sports, and geographic, personal, and
company names. Each Knowledge Domain includes a robust
thesaurus/taxonomy, an accompanying rule base, and a
training subset. This allows automatic filtering of
data and/or assisted metatagging for topical access
to data [505/998-0800; 800/926-8268; www.accessinn.com].

Net Snippets introduced a server component
to complement its platform for personal content collection
and management. The new server module adds powerful
functionality for enhanced collaborative online research,
enabling the professional delivery of research results
as well as automatically generating a Web-based research
repository [408/884-2305; www.netsnippets.com].